Deregulation in the energy industry has created a complex set of business requirements for market participants such as utility companies and energy suppliers. The introduction of retail choice among energy suppliers requires data flow between market participants to facilitate business events such as customer enrollment/switching, metered usage/billing/payment, load aggregation and settlements, customer account data maintenance, and other business events. Business transactions make up the business events which are validated using business rules.
Market participants may be required to exchange data in the form of business transactions with other market participants. However, these market participants may be located in different jurisdictions including other states or other countries which may have different laws, rules, and regulations. Moreover, the market participants may have adopted different business events, business rules, and business transactions having different standards, protocols, and formats.